Cuisine Canada Scene

When Jo Marie Powers retired from the School of Hospitality and Tourism, University of Guelph, in 1998, as a volunteer activity she began the Canadian Culinary Book Awards. In the beginning this was a way of collecting cookbooks for the University’s culinary collection (now numbering more than 12,000 titles) and letting Canadians know who our super-star authors and publishers were. Soon it became such a fun activity that it became her primary retirement activity.

Last fall, Jo Marie turned the awards over to Fiona Lucas and a team of four headed up by Karen Baxter. Before this, at the University of Guelph, Penn State University and Morris Brown College, she taught restaurant management courses, specializing in the history and culture of foods. Her work during the 50 some years since she finished university included almost every job in food beginning with a media job in the late 1950s telling people what foods were in season (does that sound familiar 60 years later?) Before she began her teaching career, she also planned menus for hotels her husband managed. Jo Marie will now manage the Hall of Fame book award for Cuisine Canada.

Her five sons with their families live both in Canada and the United States. She has five grandchildren and five grand-dogs. She and her husband, Tom, will be celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversary this year.

What’s your weakness? Dessert or mains?
Ice cream in any shape or form – it’s a family thing. When we go to a new town we seek out the best ice cream shop.

Who or what got you interested in food?
When I was about three, I cut out pictures of food instead of paper dolls and pasted them in scrapbooks. My mother influenced me the most – she’d send me off to the kitchen to cook something to get me out from underfoot.

What inspires you?
Cookbooks – well written and beautifully illustrated. If I find one recipe in a new cookbook that I love it’s worth the price.

What was your favourite dinner when you were a kid? Do you like it now?
My mother was a nutritionist and you won’t believe that for our birthdays parties we asked her to make our favourite dinner of liver and bacon, baked potato and spinach (not a great hit with our friends as I remember). Now liver is not the “in” healthy food it once was and no one in my family will eat it so occasionally I’ll find it on a restaurant menu and fill up.

What’s the first dish you remember making?
Mud pies with my sister beautifully decorated with wild flowers. Mother put up with it and just had us hose off at the back door. The next step up was Wacky Cake and Magic Mountain Muffins that we made during World War II.

Proudest food-related moment?
There were two, both student-related. The first was in the 1960s when teaching in Atlanta at an African-American college. The students were planning the faculty Christmas party – a traditional Southern African-American barbecue. Just before the party the flu struck and the school closed. Most students left to enjoy a longer Christmas vacation at home. But all my students stayed to cook the whole pig and everything that went with it, and that meant staying up all night turning, poking and basting the pig. The other event was at Guelph when I was teaching  the fine-dining course. A similar situation – a snow storm that closed the University the first time in its history. My students had studied and were presenting a traditional Chinese banquet. They had spent days planning and going to Toronto for supplies. The dinner was the day the university closed. Again, every student in the class stayed to work the dinner. I always found that nothing can hold back students if they get excited about something.

Strangest food you’ve ever eaten?
1987 — a live seafood platter in La Rochelle, France.  My son still claims he was chasing little critters crawling around on the plate.

Favourite sound in the kitchen?
Classical music while cooking or perhaps the sound of the dishwasher running.

Favourite cooking smell?
Least favourite, I have to confess, is smoke, due to my frequent  inattention to what I’m doing. The smoke alarm doesn’t like it either.  If company is coming, with a smokey kitchen I put on a pot of spiced mulled cider (a pinch of 5-spice powder is good cover-up).

Quintessential Canadian dish?
Maple sugar candies and I like mine boiled down with heavy cream. We start the maple with the sap so it takes about a week to get to the candies! That is indeed “slow food”.

Molecular gastronomy, best thing ever or the unwearable haute couture of food?
It’s been around for decades – believe it or not, gelatin and Jello were wonder foods of the early 20^th century – the library has a great collection of Jello recipe booklets with amazing photographs that look like molecular gastronomy today. I think they even made a kind of Jello spaghetti.

Cilantro — can’t get enough or tastes like soap?
Love it but wish I could buy a smaller bunch. It’s a great plant for the garden because I can clip off what I need and it comes back year after year, but I haven’t had much luck growing it in a window during the winter.

What local foods can’t you live without?
A game I play when I go to the Farmers’ market is to see how much local food I can buy, even in the wintertime. In addition to winter vegetables – potatoes, carrots, turnips, celery root, onions, green-house vegetables (tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers) don’t forget our staples — eggs, milk, chicken, turkey, beef and pork. I’m still amazed to see some of the market produce available — each summer I look forward to the fresh figs brought  in by a man who brings his trees indoors during the winter.

What’s your greatest culinary extravagance?
Really great seafood – lobsters, scallops, large shrimp  and when my son comes home from Vancouver, sable fish.

Most over-rated kitchen gadget?
I have cupboards full of them. All I need is a good knife and cutting board but my kids think I have to have every implement known to humankind. Perhaps the funniest were the special forks for carrying a large turkey!

What’s the most treasured possession in your kitchen? Why?
French knife.

Fill in the blank. If I never cooked / ate / heard about  ______ again, I’d be happy.
Can’t think of anything. I’m like my Chinese students who used to brag that they would eat anything with four legs except the table, and anything that flies except an airplane.

If you could cook for anyone, alive or dead, who would it be and why?
Funny you should ask. This year my husband, Tom, and I will have our 50^th wedding anniversary. We’re planning a weekend with all our children, their partners, grandchildren and grand-dogs. I’m hoping to have a chef friend prepare the big anniversary feast. I love his meals because each course is a surprise, totally different from the previous course.  That’s what I really love – a celebratory meal lasting about three hours with eight or so courses. (We are encountering a problem however finding a place that will take the five dogs!)

What  was the last thing you ate?
Today Tom and I had magret of duck, sweet potatoes, mixed frozen vegetables, tossed  salad and chocolate bread pudding. I don’t usually have duck during the week but found one in the back of the freezer along with the frozen vegetables. I made two meals with the duck. I cut off the breasts and sauteed them quickly with slices of  honeyed orange slices. Tomorrow I’ll roast the rest of the duck.

If you had to work outside the culinary field, what would you do?
I think I’d like to work in a remote park as a forest ranger.